Two sons of a man shot by immigration officers in Houston this month testified at a congressional hearing Friday, describing the horror and confusion of learning their father had been killed, and demanding a transparent investigation into how he died and why.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed July 7, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers chased his white work van through the streets, then shot him through the window in front of his work crew,
including his brother.
Salgado Araujo’s sons read from prepared remarks at a Houston hearing with Democratic members of Congress. The sons' voices often choked with emotion as they described their father as a humble and hardworking family man. He had lived without legal status in the U.S. for 35 years, ran a homebuilding business and had never been in trouble with the law.
“He didn’t need anybody to know his name,” Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Jr. told the hearing, held by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “He worked hard to protect and provide for our family, to put me and my siblings through college. He taught us that good things come to those that work hard.”
The Department of Homeland Security said shortly after the shooting that Salgado Araujo had rammed his van into the immigration vehicles chasing him, then “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer,” and that the officer fired in self-defense. The officers were not wearing body cameras.
At least two of the passengers in the van have disputed the government's account, saying the officers crashed into the van and were safely on the sides of the vehicle, never in danger of being struck, when the officer fired. All three passengers in the van were arrested and remain in immigration detention. One of them is Salgado Araujo’s brother, Victor, whose account of the killing is not public because his petition for release is sealed.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told the hearing that DHS, which oversees ICE, has ignored his requests for information and evidence, including the name of the officer who fired the fatal shot.
Nevertheless, he said, his office was making “significant progress.” He declined to discuss specific evidence or speculate on when his office’s investigation would end.
Salgado Araujo’s sons said their father would have never run from officers, who were driving unmarked vehicles, if he’d known who they were. They had talked as a family about what they would do if he encountered ICE, and they said he believed he would find a way to get back home to them.
They said he was a man of routine. The day he was killed started as most did: He woke up before dawn, his wife cooked him a hearty breakfast, then he said goodbye to her and their dog. He got into his white van, said a prayer and left before 6 a.m. to pick up his crew.
Ronaldo Salgado said his mother called him around 7 a.m. to say something bad had happened. He saw a Facebook post about an encounter with immigration officers and rushed to the scene. He was there for hours, he said, begging officers and neighbors for information, even asking one homeowner to climb onto her roof to survey the scene.
Then a Facebook video appeared.
“I learned again from a Facebook post that our dad had been shot,” he told the hearing. “Not because I could see him, but because I could hear his voice on videos posted online crying for help.”
He rushed to the hospital. More hours passed before Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia demanded answers, and they learned he was dead.
Garcia said the Democratic delegation has sent multiple letters to DHS and ICE about the shooting and has received no response. The delegation also invited representatives of the department and the administration to attend the hearing, and they declined.
An email sent to DHS by The Associated Press seeking comment Friday was not immediately returned.
Lorenzo Jr. called what happened to them “a kafkaesque nightmare.” They said they mourned not only for their father, but also for the families of others killed by immigration officers, including Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old who was shot in Maine days after their dad.
The sons called on Congress to make sure justice is served.
Lorenzo asked people to imagine what the brothers were experiencing by picturing a loved one “pinned to the ground in pain and yelling out in desperate need of help.”
“Picture the anger and helplessness of watching that person bleed out through a video on your phone. What would you do after?” he asked. “How would you cope with the feeling of losing your protector, your role model, your mother’s loving partner, your grandmother’s little boy?”
He added, “That feeling you feel right now is only a fraction of what my family and I have felt these past 17 days.”
